Apartmentally Embittered
Tomorrow, at noon, I have an appointment to look at an apartment here in North Vancouver. It is, at last count, approaching the 20th place I've looked at since the first of December. I am hoping it will be the last.
There is something particularly horrible to me about the whole giving notice/packing/moving/finding a new place/signing a lease ordeal. Its traumatic for me in the best of times. Even if I had not been simultaneously starting a new job in another city while trying to make this happen...if I had nothing to do for the past month but orchestrate the move and roll around in money, it would have traumatized me.
So having spent the last few weeks looking at the worst and most overpriced apartments that North Vancouver has to offer, I am about to look for a large refrigerator box behind the Wal-Mart in which I can curl up in the fetal position and cry myself to sleep everynight.
Case in point...last week I saw 4 places - all one bedrooms in crappy low-rise buildings that haven't seen any renovations since the early 80's. Two in particular stood out in my memory as the pits of the pits.
In one, I met a small Chinese woman at the door and it became obvious to me that she didn't speak English very well. Since my Mandarin was not particularly existent, I was not feeling hopeful. As soon as we neared the second floor (walk-up no less - the elevator was not working) I could hear the amazingly loud hip-hop music coming from one of the suites on the floor. Sure enough, it was the unit right next to the one I was to see. I didn't spend too much time looking at the apartment, especially after trying to ask the landlady if the noise was a regularly occurring problem and having her shout "no problem! no problem!" at me.
Next.
The apartment I saw later that night managed to top even that experience. I was met at the door by an imaptient, decidedly unfriendly older man with a strong eastern-European accent in a leather coat and eye-watering cologne levels. He starts talking on his cellphone in the elevator and rarely stops the entire time he's showing me the place. The "spectacular views" turned out to be of the alley. The "recently renovated kitchen" obvioulsy missed the ancient linoleum and scratched-up counter-tops. The bathroom had, among its many horrors, a powder-blue toilet, an avacado-colored bathtub and this nightmarish black grunge around in the tiles around the tub that I suggested was mould (according to the loandlord, it was dirt which I could easily clean after moving in).
Ughhhh.
So tomorrow, I'm scheduled to see a "spacious" one bedroom with a dishwasher and an indoor pool in the building. Having been through what I've been through so far, I am hesitant to get my hopes up but I still have a good feeling about it. Patience has been my friend lately so this may be the one.
We'll see.
There is something particularly horrible to me about the whole giving notice/packing/moving/finding a new place/signing a lease ordeal. Its traumatic for me in the best of times. Even if I had not been simultaneously starting a new job in another city while trying to make this happen...if I had nothing to do for the past month but orchestrate the move and roll around in money, it would have traumatized me.
So having spent the last few weeks looking at the worst and most overpriced apartments that North Vancouver has to offer, I am about to look for a large refrigerator box behind the Wal-Mart in which I can curl up in the fetal position and cry myself to sleep everynight.
Case in point...last week I saw 4 places - all one bedrooms in crappy low-rise buildings that haven't seen any renovations since the early 80's. Two in particular stood out in my memory as the pits of the pits.
In one, I met a small Chinese woman at the door and it became obvious to me that she didn't speak English very well. Since my Mandarin was not particularly existent, I was not feeling hopeful. As soon as we neared the second floor (walk-up no less - the elevator was not working) I could hear the amazingly loud hip-hop music coming from one of the suites on the floor. Sure enough, it was the unit right next to the one I was to see. I didn't spend too much time looking at the apartment, especially after trying to ask the landlady if the noise was a regularly occurring problem and having her shout "no problem! no problem!" at me.
Next.
The apartment I saw later that night managed to top even that experience. I was met at the door by an imaptient, decidedly unfriendly older man with a strong eastern-European accent in a leather coat and eye-watering cologne levels. He starts talking on his cellphone in the elevator and rarely stops the entire time he's showing me the place. The "spectacular views" turned out to be of the alley. The "recently renovated kitchen" obvioulsy missed the ancient linoleum and scratched-up counter-tops. The bathroom had, among its many horrors, a powder-blue toilet, an avacado-colored bathtub and this nightmarish black grunge around in the tiles around the tub that I suggested was mould (according to the loandlord, it was dirt which I could easily clean after moving in).
Ughhhh.
So tomorrow, I'm scheduled to see a "spacious" one bedroom with a dishwasher and an indoor pool in the building. Having been through what I've been through so far, I am hesitant to get my hopes up but I still have a good feeling about it. Patience has been my friend lately so this may be the one.
We'll see.